


Catch Me I'm Falling

by neednot



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, post iwtb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23850412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot
Summary: Post-IWTB, Mulder and Scully try to work through their past, but it might not be enough.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37
Collections: X-Files Angst Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	Catch Me I'm Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [floweringrebel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweringrebel/gifts).



It’s the fourth time this day she’s snapped at him, the fourth time today he’s given her a terse response in answering, and if she didn’t know herself better she’d swear she was trying to pick a fight.

(She does know herself better. She’s absolutely trying to pick a fight.)

Normally she can bury herself in her work, but not now, not when her work involves him, being so close to him.

Something changed when they came back from dealing with the case with Father Joe, something shifting after they moved in together. Weeks of bliss of finally being back with each other, then old problems surfacing, old annoyance neither of them has wanted to talk about. Mulder’s depression spiraling for a six-month period where Scully took care of him, and now these last few weeks where he’s just returned to work, and she’s tried so hard to keep herself from falling apart.

She has to be fine. She’s the strong one, after all.

“Would you _stop_?” she hisses when he cracks a sunflower seed in his teeth for the fifth time, and he looks up at her.

“What?” he asks.

“Just—just _stop,_ ” she says. “Or I will take that fucking bag of seeds away from you, the sound is driving me mad.”

“It’s never bothered you before.”

“It’s bothering me now,” she snaps. She runs her fingers through her hair, suddenly on the verge of tears.

What is _wrong_ with her? Surely not menopause, though she suspects that’s only a few years away.

In truth, she’s been like this ever since they moved into that damn house, though she doesn’t dare admit that to herself, or to Mulder. If she spoke that out loud she can’t imagine what would happen.

“I’m going home,” she says.

“We’re not done with the case.”

“I’ll finish it tomorrow. I’m going home.”

He nods, and her heart breaks, just a little. In the past he would have offered to come with her, would have tried to bribe her with takeout or bending her over the desk if she stayed.

In the past, though, she would have said yes—to either of those things. Now she’s sure if he offered she’d just shake her head and go home anyway.

But at least he would have offered.

She runs a bath when she gets home, dries off, and settles herself on the couch. Maybe she will order takeout, now that the thought has entered her head.

Her body tenses when she hears Mulder’s key in the lock, and she hates that it does, because it is not the pleasant tensing of anticipation, but again that annoyance of him being here.

She wants to be alone, she realizes, but she knows that he might take it as an affront if she tells him that, even though that’s all she wants.

Her jaw clenches, and again, that thought—what is _wrong_ with her?

She closes her eyes and settles back down on the couch like she’s asleep, immediately feeling like a foolish fourteen-year-old again, caught doing something wrong by her mom and pretending to be asleep when her dad came home.

It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now.

“Hey,” Mulder says, and he tosses his keys down on the table and it’s enough to set her teeth on edge again. She doesn’t respond, and she hears him sigh. “Scully…”

She feels the couch dip as he sits on the edge of it, as his hand reaches up her leg, gently caressing. “Can we talk?”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Mulder,” she says quietly, and she hears him sigh again, the disappointment evident in his tone.

“Don’t make me use the psychology degree,” he says, and she knows he means it as a joke, but it falls flat.

“Leave me alone,” she says.

She finally dares to look at him. His brow is creased, and he looks… old.

But then, so does she. She’s not the girl she was when she joined the X-files, fresh out of the Academy, young, idealistic. Neither is he.

He takes his hand in hers, softly massaging her fingers. “Look, I know things haven’t been right between us, I know the cases haven’t helped, but…”

“No,” she snaps, and sits up, pulling away from him. “No buts, Mulder. I… I can’t do this anymore.” She feels tears pricking at the back of her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Scully, what are you talking about?”

“This,” she says. “Us. Nothing—this isn’t working! Nothing about this is working!” She says, and all of the feelings she’s pent up since they returned from that case with Father Joe, all of the emotions she’s had since all of this fucking started so many years ago come rushing out. “We—we aren’t good together, Mulder! There’s too much and there’s so much fucking trauma that neither of us have ever talked about—not just with that case but with all of it, Mulder, and I can’t—I can’t keep doing these cases and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t!” Her voice breaks on the last word and she buries her face in her hands. She hates crying in front of him, hates him seeing her as weak.

She doesn’t know what she expects. Him to reach out, touch her, hold her, tell her that everything is going to be okay.

But he doesn’t. For one of the first times in all their years together, he doesn’t.

“I didn’t know,” he says, and when she finally opens her eyes and looks at him he’s staring down at the floor. “Scully, why—why didn’t you…”

Why didn’t she say anything. Why is she always the one to say something, to communicate, to try to hold them together? She knows that’s an unfair thought, know that sometimes Mulder has done more to hold the two of them together than she ever has, but she thinks it anyway.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mulder asks, and she laughs. She can’t help it. She’s wanted to talk about it, all of it, for years—her abduction and Duane Barry and Donnie Pfaster and Tooms and CSM and Emily and Melissa and William and and and—

“Why?” She says. “Why should I talk about it?”

“Because it’ll help, and you’re right, we should…”

“It’s too late, Mulder,” she says, and he nods, like he already knew that would be the answer, like he knew that’s what she was going to say.

* * *

He comes to bed late, and she doesn’t know what time it is when he finally gets in and wraps his arms around her, but she closes her eyes.

“Scully,” he tries again, and she tenses, and she knows he can feel it.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Mulder,” she says.

“Why not?”

 _Because I don’t want to lose you._ The thought is startling, and sudden, and there, and she knows immediately that it’s the reason. She has to be the strong one, she can’t let herself fall apart, can’t let herself talk about it, because if she does, then…

Then what will happen to him? If she falls apart? The meds are just now working, he’s just now going back to work, and she feels as if they’re both balancing on a high wire act waiting for the other one to fall.

She’ll be able to catch him, if he does. She’s not so sure he’ll be able to do the same for her.

* * *

She takes a sick day from work. She can see the concern on his face—this is how it started with him—but she waves him off, prepared to spend her day under the blanket on the couch, watching some soap, sleeping.

And she does. Until he comes home, and again that tension enters her body. He doesn’t come to try to wake her this time, and again, she feels that urge to pick a fight brewing.

“How was work?” She asks, and she can hear the passive-aggression in her tone that would give her mother on her worst days a run for her money.

“Fine,” Mulder says. “I just finished up what was left from yesterday. Honestly, it was easy.”

“Sounds like you didn’t need me,” Scully says, and he comes into the living room, a frown on his face.

“I didn’t say that.”

She shrugs. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe I should just leave.”

She doesn’t know where the words are coming from but they’re there all the same, and the frown on Mulder’s face deepens.

“Scully…”

She shakes her head. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” He says. “God dammit Scully, you’ve been angry with me the past few days, you spend last night crying and saying we shouldn’t be together, then you tell me you don’t want to talk about it, and now—now this?” His face falls. “You can’t do this to me.”

“Can’t what? Can’t say I want to leave?” She snaps. She wants him to yell back, stop her, hold her. She doesn’t want to see him this defeated. All those passionate arguments about faith and truth and belief and nights yelling at each other and fighting and then fucking after, it’s all dissolved to this.

“Do you?” He says. “Want to leave?”

“I… I don’t know. A break, maybe, I can tell Skinner…”

But Mulder shakes his head and sits down next to her and it breaks her heart because she knows what he’s going to ask.

“Do you want to leave me?”

She draws in a breath. Hears the words in her head, knows she has to say them.

She draws in a breath. Hears the words in her head, knows she has to say them.

“I don’t _want_ to.”

“But you’re going to,” he says, and she leans her head on his shoulder, and she doesn’t respond. He strokes his thumb over the blade of her shoulder, and holds her to him as if he can keep her there.

* * *

When he wakes up in the morning, she’s still there, and the relief that floods his body almost makes him double over.

He leaves her a note, goes to buy a bagel and coffee for her at that place she loves, the one they swore to come to every weekend when they first moved into this house, the one he used to surprise her with almost every day before.

He doesn’t think about what she said last night. Instead he does what he always does, which is cling to the improbable, that note in her voice, that word of she didn’t _want_ to leave. She _doesn’t_ want to leave.

He will hold onto that. He can make this work. He has taken his meds and showered and gotten dressed and gone to work every day for the past two weeks, and she has been a saint like always and taken care of him and so what if she snapped at him, so _what_ if she talked about leaving, he will do what he has always done and take care of her.

If she falls, he’ll be waiting to catch her. Even if there are times he hasn’t believed in himself, in the truth, in whatever they’re working or fighting towards, he has always believed in her.

She is the one constant in his life, and he will not lose her.

* * *

But when he steps in the door, he knows. He hates it that he knows but he does because it’s the same fear he’s been fighting for months made real, the same emptiness he used to feel in his chest and carry around in his body manifested into this physical space that they used to share but that now only holds him.

There is a hot bagel in a bag in his hand and a latte with full fat milk like she likes and she is not here to enjoy it because she didn’t want to leave but he understands that she had to and she did.

And he falls to his knees, and she isn’t there to catch him.


End file.
